1859 — Yellow Fever, esp. Galveston/186 and Houston/22, TX, New Orleans, LA/91 — 337
Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 3-14-2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/
–337 Blanchard tally based on numbers below.
Louisiana ( 91)
— 91 New Orleans. Keating 1879, 101.
— 9 “ Oct 10-16. Interments “from yellow fever.” (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, IA. 10-29-1859, 3.)
— 25 “ Charity Hospital, approximately Oct 24-30. (Evening Enquirer, Evansville, IN. 11-2-1859)
Texas (246)
— 2 Brazoria Galveston Weekly News. “Sickness in Brazoria.” 11-1-1859, p. 3.
— ? Brownsville Galveston Weekly News. 11-1-1859, p. 1, col. 5.
— 23 Cypress, by Oct 22. New Orleans Daily Crescent. “Texas Intelligence.” 10-31-1859, p. 3
— 13 Edinburgh Keating 1879, 101.
–186 Galveston U.S. Marine Hosp. Svc. Annual Report…FY 1895. 1896, 438.
–182 “ Sternberg 1908, p. 719. [We show a few samples below.]
–1 Oct 8. Robert Rogiers. Galveston Weekly News. “Burials.” 10-11-1859, p. 1. col. 1.
–4 Oct 9. Miss Fitzsimmons and three men from the Hospital.[1]
–3 Oct 10. Galveston Weekly News. “Burials.” 10-11-1859, p. 1. col. 1.
–3 Oct 13. E. J. Nizmonger, W. J. Wells, H.B. Grinnell. Galveston News. 10-18-1859, p.2.
–7 Oct 14. Thomas Oermick, Dan George, Mary George, Ed. Hago, John Brown,
John Gilen, Joseph Revillio.[2]
–6 Oct 15. Jno. Niebling, 50, H. H. Hones, 20, J. J. Williams, Jno. Fraer, Thos. Kelley,
25, and Jno. Fitzpatrick, 22, Ireland.[3]
–3 Oct 17. Geo. Wood, Theo. Blackman, Germany, and Wm. Munson, American.[4]
–8 Oct 25-26. New Orleans Daily Crescent. “Texas Intelligence.” 10-31-1859, p. 3.
–1 Nov 16. Henry Kuhn, 25. Galveston Weekly News, TX. 11-22-1859, p. 1, col. 1.
— 22 Houston, Oct 24-26. New Orleans Daily Crescent. “Texas Intelligence.” 10-31-1859, p. 3
Narrative Information
Oct 29: “For the week ending Sunday, 16th inst., there were 156 interments at New Orleans, of which nine were from yellow fever. Although raging but to a very limited extent, the yellow fever has caused quite a stampede among the northerners sojourning in that city.” (Council Bluffs Nonpareil, IA. “Yellow Fever.” 10-29-1859, p. 3, col. 3.)
Oct 31: “Texas Intelligence. On the 25th and 26th there were eight deaths in Galveston from yellow fever. During the 24th, 25th, and a part of the 26th the deaths in Houston numbered 22. Up to the 22nd there had been 23 deaths altogether from yell fever in the town of Cyress. On the 24th there were 9 cases on that list, all convalescent.” (New Orleans Daily Crescent. “Texas Intelligence.” 10-31-1859, p. 3.)
Nov 1: “Dispatches from New Orleans the 28th, to the Associated Press, state that the yellow fever continues at Galveston and Houston. There is none at Indianola.” (Associated Press. “From New Orleans.” Columbus Weekly Sun, GA, 11-1-1859, p. 1.)
Nov 1: “New Orleans, Nov. 1 – Noon…. Twenty five deaths from yellow fever occurred at the Charity Hospital the present week.” (Evening Enquirer, Evansville, IN. 11-2-1859, p. 2, col. 3.)
Nov 1: “Cameron [TX]. – We learn from the Brownsville Flagg of the 8th [Oct?], that…the yellow fever had…disappeared. Strangers could visit the city of Brownsville in safety, so far as the health of the place was concerned.” (Galveston Weekly News. 11-1-1859, p. 1, col. 5.)
Nov 22: “Since the Norther of Saturday and Sunday last the weather has greatly moderated, and this morning it is quite summery again. Yet with this change in the temperature, we hear of no new cases of fever, and the Sexton reports but one burial since our last issue, that of Henry Kuhn, Swiss, aged 25 years, who died of Yellow fever on the 16th. It is to be sincerely hoped that the late severe frost has effectually routed the enemy, and that we shall see mothering further to record of his ravages this season.” (Galveston Weekly News, TX. 11-22-1859, p. 1, col. 1.)
On Yellow Fever
Yellow Fever (Board of Experts, 1879): “Yellow fever made its first appearance within the present limits of the United States in the year 1693, in Boston, Massachusetts, into which it was imported from Barbadoes. In 1699 it paid its first visit to Philadelphia, coming also from Barbadoes. It reached New York for the first time in 1702, having been imported from St. Thomas. The first epidemic in New Orleans occurred in 1796. Its origin has not been certainly traced; but the fever was in the same year imported into Charleston from the West Indies.
“Yellow fever has invaded the present territorial limits of the United States, according to the testimony of existing records, in eighty-eight different years, namely, in—
1693, 1699, 1702, 1705, 1713, 1728, 1782, 1789, 1741, 1744, 1745, 1747, 1748, 1762, 1765, 1791, 1792, 1793, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806, 1809, 1811, 1817, 1818, 1819, 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823, 1824, 1825, 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829, 1830, 1831, 1882, 1883, 1834, 1835, 1837, 1888, 1839, 1841, 1842, 1848, 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849, 1851, 1852, 1858, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1862, 1868, 1864, 1865, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878.” (pp. 12-13)
(Board of Experts Authorized by Congress to Investigate the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878. Conclusions of the Board of Experts Authorized by Congress to Investigate the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878. Washington, DC: Judd & Detweiler, Printers, 1879.)
Yellow Fever (Ellis): “Originally brought to the Western Hemisphere by the African slave trade, yellow fever is an acute infectious disease transmitted in a man-vector-man cycle by the female Aedes aegypti mosquito. The vector acquires the virus by a blood meal from an infectious human, and following an incubation period of approximately twelve days, it can then transmit the disease throughout its lifetime. Yellow fever is characterized by sudden onset of headache, chills, and fever followed by nausea, muscular pain, prostration, and the appearance of jaundice. At this point, from three to five days after onset, the patient may hemorrhage from external orifices, throw up the black vomit caused by internal hemorrhaging, and die following convulsions or coma, or the person may experience a remission of symptoms and begin a course of slow convalescence….Survival of an attack confers a lifelong immunity on white and black alike, but blacks possessed a genetic resistance to the disease that took its greatest toll among whites.” (Ellis, John H. Yellow Fever & Public Health in the New South. Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992, p. 31.)
Yellow Fever (eMedTV): “Yellow fever is a serious disease caused by the yellow fever virus, which is found in certain parts of Africa and South America. The virus is spread through the bite of an infected mosquito. Some people who get infected will have no symptoms; others may have flu-like symptoms or severe symptoms. Most people recover without any long-term effects….
“Yellow fever is not contagious, meaning it is not passed directly from humans to other humans. It is not spread through casual contact, such as touching or kissing a person with the virus.
“Transmission of the virus occurs in two main ways: urban (mosquito bites an infected human) and sylvatic (mosquito bites an infected monkey)….” (eMedTV. “Yellow Fever.”)
Yellow Fever (Lamb): “Yellow fever is an infectious disease that is transmitted by mosquitoes, not native to North America, which probably bred in water barrels on slave ships from the West Coast of Africa (Duffy 1953[5]). The disease is characterized first by high fever and flushed face, lips, and tongue. Within a few days, temperature drops below normal, the skin takes on a yellowish hue, and bloody, black vomiting occurs. Death occurs due to liver and kidney failure and extreme toxemia. According to Duffy (1953), the case-fatality rate from yellow fever in colonial America varied between 12% and 80%.” (Lamb. “Historical and Epidemiological Trends in Mortality in the United States,” 2003. p. 186.)
Yellow Fever (Mattick): “Yellow fever probably originated in West Africa and was brought to the New World through the slave trade. The first recorded epidemics in the New World occurred in the Yucatan (1648) and Cuba (1649). In the 1700s it also struck as far north as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Outbreaks in Florida occurred nearly every two years from 1764 until 1905. After 1825, there were few outbreaks in the North, but the South continued to be gripped by the scourge every summer, though only occasionally did it reach epidemic proportions.”[6]
“The bilges of ships are…excellent breeding environment, and transport infected mosquitoes from yellow fever regions of the Caribbean to many of America’s port cities. There is no difference in susceptibility to yellow fever according to age, sex, or race. Cases among young children are usually so mild, however, that they are often not detected. It was long thought that blacks were immune to yellow fever. By the late nineteenth century, however, scientists realized that blacks were just as susceptible as any other race, but they rarely die from the disease. Yellow Fever is believed to have originated in West Africa, and the relative immunity of persons of West African descent may be a result of generations of exposure to the disease.”[7] (p. 102)
(Mattick, Barbara E. Ministries in Black and White: The Catholic Sisters of St. Augustine, Florida, 1859-1920. A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Florida State University. 2008.)
Yellow Fever (Wisconsin Dept. of Health Services): “Communicable diseases, also known as infectious diseases or transmissible diseases, are illnesses that result from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic (capable of causing disease) biologic agents in an individual human or other animal host. Infections may range in severity from asymptomatic (without symptoms) to severe and fatal. The term infection does not have the same meaning as infectious disease because some infections do not cause illness in a host.
“Disease causing biologic agents include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, multicellular parasites, and aberrant proteins known as prions. Transmission of these biologic agents can occur in a variety of ways, including direct physical contact with an infectious person, consuming contaminated foods or beverages, contact with contaminated body fluids, contact with contaminated inanimate objects, airborne (inhalation), or being bitten by an infected insect or tick. Some disease agents can be transmitted from animals to humans, and some of these agents can be transmitted in more than one way.
“For information about specific communicable disease subjects, see the list below…Yellow Fever.” (Wisc. Dept. of Health Services. Communicable Diseases (website). 4-26-2013 revision.)
Sources
Associated Press. “From New Orleans.” Columbus Weekly Sun, GA, 11-1-1859, p. 1. Accessed 3-14-2024 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/columbus-weekly-sun-nov-01-1859-p-2/
Board of Experts Authorized by Congress to Investigate the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878. Conclusions of the Board of Experts Authorized by Congress to Investigate the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878. Washington, DC: Judd & Detweiler, Printers, 1879. Digitized at: http://cdm16313.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/LSUBK01/id/392/rec/14
Council Bluffs Nonpareil, IA. “Yellow Fever.” 10-29-1859, p. 3, col. 3. Accessed 3-14-2024 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/council-bluffs-nonpareil-oct-29-1859-p-3/
Ellis, John H. Yellow Fever & Public Health in the New South. University Press of Kentucky, 1992, p. 31. Partially google digitized at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=pqRcT7sFYYYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
eMedTV. “Yellow Fever.” Accessed 10-20-2013 at:
http://virus.emedtv.com/yellow-fever/yellow-fever.html
Evening Enquirer, Evansville, IN. 11-2-1859, p. 2, col. 3. Accessed 3-14-2024 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/evansville-daily-evening-enquirer-nov-01-1859-p-2/
Galveston Weekly News, TX. 11-1-1859, p. 1, col. 5. Accessed 3-14-2024 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/galveston-weekly-news-nov-01-1859-p-1/
Galveston Weekly News, TX. 11-22-1859, p. 1, col. 1. Accessed 3-14-2024 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/galveston-weekly-news-nov-22-1859-p-1/
Galveston Weekly News. “Burials.” 10-11-1859, p. 1. col. 1. Accessed 3-14-2024 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/galveston-weekly-news-oct-11-1859-p-2/
Galveston Weekly News, TX. “Sexton’s Report.” 10-18-1859, p. 2, col. 1. Accessed 3-14-2024 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/galveston-weekly-news-oct-18-1859-p-2/
Galveston Weekly News, TX. “Sickness in Brazoria.” 11-1-1859, p. 3. Accessed 3-14-2024 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/galveston-weekly-news-nov-01-1859-p-3/
Keating, J. M. A History of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tenn. Memphis, TN: Howard Association, 1879. Google preview accessed 3-16-2018 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=WEIJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Lamb. “Historical and Epidemiological Trends in Mortality in the United States,” 2003.
Mattick, Barbara E. Ministries in Black and White: The Catholic Sisters of St. Augustine, Florida, 1859-1920. A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Florida State University. Degree awarded Spring Semester, 2008
New Orleans Daily Crescent. “Texas Intelligence.” 10-31-1859, p. 3. Accessed 3-14-2024 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/new-orleans-daily-crescent-oct-31-1859-p-3/
Sternberg, George M. (US Public Health Service, US Marine Hospital Service). “Yellow Fever: History and Geographic Distribution.” Pages 715-722 in Stedman, Thomas L., M.D. (Ed.) Appendix to the Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences. NY: William Wood & Co., 1908. Google preview accessed 3-18-2018 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=3ezqX415M5wC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false
United States Marine-Hospital Service, Treasury Department. Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1895 (Document No. 1811). Washington, DC: GPO, 1896. Google preview accessed 3-16-2018 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false
Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Communicable Diseases (website). 4-26-2013 revision. Accessed 10-20-2013 at: http://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/communicable/
[1] Galveston Weekly News. “Burials.” 10-11-1859, p. 1. col. 1.
[2] Galveston Weekly News, TX. “Sexton’s Report.” 10-18-1859, p. 2, col. 1.
[3] Galveston Weekly News, TX. “Sexton’s Report.” 10-18-1859, p. 2, col. 1.
[4] Galveston Weekly News, TX. “Sexton’s Report.” 10-18-1859, p. 2, col. 1.
[5] Duffy, John. 1953. Epidemics in Colonial America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
[6] Cites: William L. Pond, “This is Yellow Fever,” Journal of the Florida Medical Association, 58 (August 1971), p. 48; Khaled J. Bloom, The Mississippi Valley’s Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), pp. 2-3; William M. Straight, “The Yellow Jack,” Journal of the Florida Medical Association, Vol. 8 (August 1971), p. 43; and Barbara Elizabeth Miller, “Tallahassee and the 1841 Yellow Fever Epidemic,” (Masters Thesis, Florida State University, 1876), p. 17.
[7] Cites Barbara Elizabeth Miller, “Tallahassee and the 1841 Yellow Fever Epidemic,” (Masters Thesis, Florida State University, 1976), pp 20-21; Khaled J. Bloom, The Mississippi Valley’s Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), pp. 10-11; George M. Sternberg, M.D., Researches Relating to the Etiology and Prevention of Yellow Fever, submitted June 21, 1890, pp. 50-52. Notes that Yellow fever is endemic in Africa between 15´N and 10´S of the equator, an area that includes West Africa. It is also endemic in the Caribbean and parts of South America. Cites: William H. Shoff, M.D. et al. “Yellow Fever,’ online at http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic2463.htm.